Install certain default extensions for all users on MacOS?

[djmandell]

Greetings,

I'm a high school teacher and have been using Brackets in my introductory programming class, using Macs. I've set up Brackets so that when each user uses it for the first time the autosave extension (Autosave every edit!) is already installed so that students are less likely to lose their work. On the Mac I could do that by copying the extension into /Applications/Brackets.app/Contents/www/extensions/default

I'd like to do something similar for Phoenix Code, but that directory doesn't exist in the new app, nor can I find any sort of alternative or any documentation discussing it. Is there a way to do add default extensions for all users on MacOS? If so, can you help me figure out how to do it?

Thanks!

[abose]

Hi @djmandell . In debug menu, select the Open Extensions Folder option. That is the path Phoenix uses to save extensions.

In macOS, it should mostly be ~/Library/Application Support/io.phcode/assets/extensions/user . Hope this helped!

[djmandell]

That would work, but I'd have to independently copy the extension into each user's Application Support directory after the student signed in and ran Phoenix Code. The benefit of the way this worked with Brackets is that it copied all of the default extensions into the user's Application Support directory when they first ran Brackets, which means there's basically no intervention required by me other than putting the extensions I want in that folder at the beginning of the year.

If there's no way to do this I might log an enhancement request. In the context of a classroom it's super useful to be able to get things set up for students in a computer lab so everything is set up when a student first runs the software.

[abose]

Ah but wouldn't changing the .app folder corrupt the app signature, or the scripts handle that as well by cleaning the signing flag. A similar method can be used for Phoenix code too, but you may have to update a json file as well. Let me check the new folder to use.

[djmandell]

It didn't cause a problem for the version of the Brackets I installed, but I couldn't tell you why.

[abose]

Interesting. Phoenix code packages the core extension files within the binary itself for better protection against tampering. So the way that used to work with brackets wont work with phoenix code by modifying the app files itself.

The best way to copy the default extension in mac is to copy to the extensions folder at user login in mac, Maybe using LaunchAgent in mac.

Or we may have to add a feature like we do for Phoenix AI Control like: https://docs.phcode.dev/docs/control-ai .